The measurement of the characteristics of complex systems is a challenge particularly if the measurements must be carried out rapidly in the real world as opposed to a laboratory environment. Usually complex systems, such as compounds containing many constituents, must be analyzed in a laboratory using sensitive and expensive equipment. As a result, with measurement systems of the type used in laboratories, it is not possible to determine in a very short time the constituents of materials or compounds outside of the laboratory. Moreover, these prior art systems, such as a typical grating-based spectrometer, utilize a large number of channels, such as 256, 512 or 1024 channels. This makes these instruments expensive and requires the use of high end computation equipment to process the data. What is needed is a fast and cost efficient system which allows one to determine the constituents of materials or compounds, for example, outside of the laboratory.